


Favor

by ezlebe



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Cuddling, Established Relationship, M/M, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 06:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28347033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ezlebe/pseuds/ezlebe
Summary: Brian slowly raises an eyebrow, a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “…So. I’m hearing that someoneelsebought you twenty grand worth of Cartier? And then let you just wear it out of the house.”“Twenty grand?” Richie blinks slowly, posture deflating some while the figure echoes between his ears. He turns both his wrists to look at the cuff links, little feline faces staring back in silence. “Ofmoney?”“Uh, yep,” Brian says, ice clinking in his glass when he tips it to take a loud sip of his cocktail. “You must be really good at sucking dick, Dick.”
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 36
Kudos: 292





	Favor

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: Short and mostly character study. I almost tagged it sugar daddy but then realized someone might be disappointed.
> 
> It is loosely related to another fic, but I realized a bit _too_ loosely for it to be really counted as part of a series. Unless a third one happens.

“Wow, Tozier,” a voice greets, slipping up beside Richie with a short click of a tongue. “You splurge for this dinky meet and greet, or what?”

Richie glances sideways to find Brian the Writer, ex-crutch and current acquaintance, then demonstratively looks down at his sneakers and the leopard print button-up under his blazer. “Totally.”

Brian rolls his eyes, shifting his drink from one hand to the other to point with a pair of fingers. “I’m talking about the cufflinks and – “ He gestures at the little gemstoned leopard acting as Richie’s pocket square for the luncheon. “That.”

“Oh,” Richie offers an exaggeratedly smug expression, showing off the gold cat with a flick of his fingers. “This ol’ thing?”

Brian slowly raises an eyebrow, a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “… _So_. I’m hearing that someone _else_ bought _you_ twenty grand worth of Cartier? And then let you just wear it out of the house.”

“Twenty grand?” Richie blinks slowly, posture deflating some while the figure echoes between his ears. He turns both his wrists to look at the cuff links, little feline faces staring back in silence. “Of _money_?”

“Uh, yep,” Brian says, ice clinking in his glass when he tips it to take a loud sip of his cocktail. “You must be really good at sucking dick, Dick.”

“What the fuck?” Richie mutters, glancing up to confirm that Brian’s expression is droll but definitely sincere. “What the _fuck.”_

* * *

Richie turns on the sofa when he hears the door open, mouth opening halfway into a spiel, only to go a little slack and dumb, watching as Eddie dresses down after his workout. He drops his eyes to stare at the way Eddie’s shoulders shift and contract, then at how lithe muscle pulls in narrow forearms when he then tugs up his sleeves. Richie shakes his head a little, looking up, and forcefully clears his throat while trying to concentrate on his _objective_. “I’m going to ask a weird question and you can’t judge me.”

“Can and am,” Eddie counters immediately, turning around in front of the refrigerator while pulling out whatever sort of milk he’s on this week.

“Right, _right_ , fuck you,” Richie says, pushing himself up and making his way into the kitchen. He leans in across the counter island, crossing his arms and settling his chin over them. “What’s your take-home?”

Eddie pauses mid-opening his shaker bottle, turning slowly and thick brow cocking upward, “My take home what?”

Richie can feel a nervous laugh crawling up his throat. “Income, duh.”

“Oh,” Eddie stares for a beat, then puts the bottle down with a discordant clank of metal on plastic on stone. “ _Why_?”

“Well,” Richie says, spreading his arms wide across the counter in some approximation of a shrug; he’s pretty sure it looks just as uncomfortable as he feels, which is appropriate. “I went to that SNL thing and wore the uh, gold leopard stuff that, you know, you got to match that shirt for no reason?”

Eddie narrows his eyes, almost squinty, “Okay?”

Richie shoves up from the counter and gestures at the shirt he’s still wearing, though he had put the jewelry away the _moment_ he got home. “Someone told me it all cost like twenty thousand dollars of real money… for what I thought was like _costume_ jewelry.”

“Oh,” Eddie shrugs, residual tension fading from his shoulders and turning around for the milk and a powder, acting like this is all nothing, “It was more like seventeen.”

“You just have… that lying around?” Richie says, gesturing a little wildly around the space of the kitchen.

Eddie sighs heavily through his nose, leaning forward while setting both hands on the kitchen island. “Richie – ”

Oh god, he’s using the _special_ condescending tone; a voice that sends so many mixed messages these days.

“ – every one of the Losers has had a frankly bafflingly successful career, including _you_. Why would I be different?”

“I didn’t think about it?” Richie admits, slumping back down onto his forearms with an eye roll downward, tapping his fingers in a vague, uneven beat against the island. “And there’s a huge difference between being _successful_ and being successful enough to buy ugly jewelry for thousands of dollars because it’s _funny_.”

“Right,” Eddie says, a smirk setting firm across his face when Richie looks up with a shove of his glasses up his nose. “So I’m successful enough.”

“I thought you worked at a small firm,” Richie says, pretty sure that his voice isn’t _entirely_ a whine.

“Small firm for very big companies and very important people,” Eddie says, resuming his acquiring of powdered foods from the cabinets with a short turn on his heel. “You really listen to nothing I say, do you?”

“We’ve never talked about it,” Richie says, rolling his eyes a little, though he knows that it’s been talking _about_ enough that he already should’ve known it. “I just – I assumed I made more?”

He doesn’t really have any reason for it, except that Eddie’s job seemed so lame.

“You do,” Eddie says, glancing sideways while dumping out a scoop of green powder. “Is this going to be a pride thing?”

Richie takes a slow, deep breath, thinking for the few extra seconds that affords him. “ _No_ ,” he says, and it’s actually the truth, because it unlocks an entire _array_ of jokes for him to put in his sets. He’s workshopped a couple where he was a new, struggling sugar daddy, but they never quite worked and now he knows exactly why – _he’s_ the baby. “How much did that watch cost that Bill whistled at last month?”

“Like five grand,” Eddie says, looking down at said watch with a thoughtful drop of his chin. “Give or take.”

Richie blinks slowly and opens his eyes wide in disbelief. “How the _fuck_ are a pair of little cufflinks more than that?”

Eddie shrugs dismissively while dumping in peanut butter powder. “That’s more of a Bev question.”

“The shirt?” Richie asks, reluctant, looking down and realizing belatedly that maybe it’s the expensive sort of ugly.

“Twelve-hundred-ish.”

“Oh my god,” Richie says, rolling his eyes hard and dropping his forehead briefly down to his arms with a shake of his head. “Why are you even making me pay half the rent?”

Eddie actually snorts, spinning the lid on with a twitch of his wrist. “I’m not, you pay _utilities_.”

Richie looks up again, pressing his lips together, then tilts his head while pushing up off the counter. “I did kind of wonder about that,” he admits, because it seemed a really small number even against his vague knowledge of New York real estate. “I don’t want to know how much this place costs, do I?”

Eddie raises his brows. “From the way you’re acting? No.”

“You know, I _really_ expected you to have a sad little shoebox because of the divorce, even with your elaborate get out of jail free prenup, but I come visit and it’s – “ Richie gestures at the kitchen; the rest of the apartment around it. It’s filled with stone countertops and tasteful modern design, supposedly chosen because it’s easy to clean, but Richie suspects it has more to do with being opposite of everything Myra and mommy. “When you invited me, I had this whole plan that I’d rescue my poor damsel Edswina from his sad little life and awful job, whisk us off to sunny LA… but fuck, the opposite happened.”

“ _Your_ house was sad,” Eddie says, starting to shake his frankly obnoxious bottle, filling the whole apartment with scratchy, metal-on-plastic noise.

“Everyone else seems to be enjoying it,” Richie says, a little tempted to pull out his phone and flash the pictures Mike sent from _his_ poolside.

Eddie settles into a flat look, wordlessly shaking his bottle for a few seconds while making Richie feel thoroughly judged. He eventually stops and pops the top, opening his mouth to disparage before taking a swig. “Yeah, _after_ we redid the kitchen and that bathroom you flooded in like 2014.”

Richie tips his head back and forth, grumbling, “I mean, yeah. But still.”

“You know why I chose this place?” Eddie asks, gesturing around them with a dubious swing of the bottle.

“Because Ben designed it?” Richie guesses, eyes following the gesture, then snapping back to Eddie’s face. “Because the gym has a rowing machine? Uhh, because it’s like a fifteen-minute walk to your office?”

Eddie shakes his head at each wrong answer, then glances markedly below their feet. “It has an arcade in the basement.”

Richie blinks slowly, bemused, “Do you go down there?”

Eddie gestures in an irked jerk back and forth if his free hand. “ _My_ plan, dumbass, was to make _you_ never want to leave.”

“Oh shit,” Richie says, feeling a smile curl across his face, warmth building just under his sternum and manifesting a little across his neck. “Mission accomplished.”

Eddie smirks with a frankly cute wag of his eyebrows; he looks just as satisfied with his answer as it makes Richie feel, springing yet another confirmation of how he feels without even the slightest hesitation. It’s envious, really, how easy it seems to be for him, though it is a stark change to his shrieky denials when they were younger.

“You know you don’t have to like, buy me stuff,” Richie says, belatedly feeling a little guilted by all the large numbers being thrown around between them; he hasn’t given Eddie anything with a big tag, not yet, but it’s hard to do because if Eddie wants something these days, he just _gets it._ “If that’s something you had to do with –”

“I didn’t buy Myra shit,” Eddie interrupts, leaving the kitchen with a shove off the island and few odd, adorable little hopping stretches on his toes into the living room. “Except for on her birthday, when I got her candle sets, which I had to remind myself to do with the Outlook calendar at work.”

Richie raises his brows, blinking a few times, then huffs through his nose. He’s pretty sure his birthday is _also_ on a calendar, Outlook or otherwise, but at least now he’s comfortably sure it not because of _apathy_.

“I buy you stuff because I like to,” Eddie continues, fixing Richie with one last significant look before slumping down onto the couch with a breezy sigh. “I would’ve thought a frankly alarming amount of ice cream and diner food between 10 and 17 would’ve made you realize that, not to mention all those arcade games. I’m just a fucking adult now and the shit I get you is bigger.”

Richie turns around to lean on the island for a few seconds, then breaks into a laugh. “Oh my _god_ , Spaghetti Man, you’ve been my sugar daddy since I was an actual baby.”

Eddie’s nose curls up. “Beep fucking beep.”

“For the record though, I would’ve stayed with you in the city even if your place was shitty and we were poor as fuck,” Richie says, pushing off the island with both hands. He makes his way back to the sofa and the paused television, dropping next to Eddie with a grin and a crane of his neck. “Anywhere you want to be, I am there.”

Eddie eyes him for a charged moment, then looks down while swirling the bottle a little more. “That’s true.”

“Aw,” Richie says, shifts on the sofa, making a show of slithering his arms around Eddie’s shoulders. “He likes me; he really likes me.”

“Richie, come _on_ ,” Eddie grumbles, lifting the bottle over a badly hidden smile. “I’m trying to eat.”

“That’s only eating if you’re an astronaut,” Richie says, dropping his eyes to the slurry with a slight curl of his nose.

Eddie rolls his eyes with a distinctly tetchy edge. “Ran out of the little protein ball things.”

“A tragedy, my liege,” Richie says, putting on a vaguely Wormtongue Voice, mostly because he suddenly can’t think of anything else simpering on the spot. “Mayhaps you shouldn’t eat them all in a day.

Eddie glances sideways between blinks, the sharpness of the look cutting to the quick. Alright, so maybe Richie eats nearly as many and only _sort of_ likes them.

Richie looks down to his phone with a mildly sullen hum, allowing the point unheeded, and starts to search up Eddie’s car on a curious whim. His brows raise high at just the first option for customization, balking at a thirty thousand dollar choice between a base and the AMG version that he knows Eddie has the with it stamped on every surface. “Your G-Wagon – ”

“My G- _class_ ,” Eddie predictably corrects, while scowling, as he always does, at the word _wagon._

“ – Costs as much as a _house_ , Spaghetti?”

“I wanted it,” Eddie says, brows going up in a familiar defiant look, abruptly looking over while gesturing a little ungainly across his front with the open bottle. “Myra always thought it was a waste of money and I _wanted_ one.”

Richie looks back to the ad on his phone, tapping through to the next option and nearly sputtering – the red paint had been an extra _six grand_? “Let me make the payments.”

“What?” Eddie says, bemusement in his voice while he glances over quick from his own phone.

Richie groans loud, dragging a hand down his face and trying to seem like this truly pains him. “I’m not contributing equally to the household.”

Eddie turns bodily to fully give him a look like he’s just started speaking in tongues.

Legitimately, this time.

“Eddie,” Richie says, lowering his voice to a markedly more… intimate tone while pushing his lower lip out in an overstated pout. “ _Please.”_

“I don’t like that Voice,” Eddie says, but his neck is flushing, as his eyes dart down to Richie’s mouth. “Or that face.”

“Liar,” Richie says, more breathlessly, blinking slow and deliberate while leaning in closer and heavier against Eddie’s side. He reaches out, lightly wrapping a hand around the lid of the shaker bottle. “You love it.”

“Seriously, you nympho?!” Eddie snaps, snatching his bottle back and tugging his knees up tight into his chest. “I have to restore my glycogen!”

Richie rears back in turn, gasping while playing at offended, and gets a little blindsided when Eddie begins laughing, giggling really, his face glowing while he hunches over his protein shake. It’s a bright sound, bubbly and joyful, and Richie feels himself melt a little with the thought he would chase it anywhere it led him.

He’s still surprised sometimes that this is really how it is now – that Eddie Kasprak lives with him and wants to _be_ with him. It just feels so much like something he’d make up. He feels like his fantasies have become almost tame, actually, though also maybe somehow more exciting, too: the likelihood of thoughts turning into reality making every wish just anticipation.

“ _Really_.” Richie shifts closer again as the giggles gradually taper off, poking at Eddie’s shoulder with his fingers at every spoken syllable. “Let me pay for your fancy jeep.”

“I want to go to Sweden,” Eddie says, grabbing Richie’s hand and stopping it, abruptly lacing their fingers tight together. “And stay in the ice hotel. We can use your money for that.”

Richie stares for a few solid beats, letting his whole arm go lax. “That is _so_ specific,” he says, brows going up and already dreading the cold, but he’ll suffer it. He’s not that shocked either – Eddie loves the snow – it’s mostly that this is the first he’s hearing anything about it.

“I saw a documentary,” Eddie says, leaning forward to set his bottle down, then back into Richie with their hands still wrapped together. He folds his other one around both, pressing a dry kiss to Richie’s knuckles. “They rebuild it every year.”


End file.
